On the home front...

Here are some odds and ends from the last week...

Guess what this is. Answer is at the very bottom.

Saturday's freezing rain left us unable to get the van into the driveway, much less the garage. Our driveway hardly has an incline, but putting the van in park didn't stop it from sliding backwards. I was overjoyed to get it partially onto the driveway/lawn.
We spent a couple days in Omaha over the new year. Leatha got the boys a set of K'nex. These toys are perfect for our engineer minded son, Cameron. Here he built a faris wheel.
Here's a shot at Jesse and Rachel (Nesbitt) Antelman's wedding. Makai is on the dance floor with Bobby and Maria Scott. I used the van ride home to preach to the kids about walking in moral purity- like Jesse and Rachel.
Here's a little conflict between Leatha and me... to have the DVD player in the van or not to have it?
We did a one day trip to NW Iowa the day after Christmas, and I was looking ALL OVER for my keys. Mysteriously, the keys were in the dead bolt lock (below) when I got home. Add this to my "I'm an idiot" list. Sadly, this doesn't even crack the top ten.  
Not pictured...

- Leatha has been making her own yogurt lately. Mixed with her homemade granola, and berries...it is amazing. Even better than McD's parfaits.

- If you're having cabin fever and you have a lot of little kids, then play a game called "Lion in the Darkness." It's a game I invented, as far as I know. Basically, you turn all the lights off (in our case, we do it in our basement). I go and hide in the dark basement, while the kids count to twenty upstairs. The kids all come and find me (I start growling to give them a clue). They are freaked out and it's a test of their courage. When they find me- sometimes I sneak up behind them- they scream and I chase them. It usually turns into a wrestling match.

It's basically hide and seek with a cool, scary name. So on second thought, maybe I didn't invent it. 

- Makai is at such a fun age (about 18 months). So much fun apparently we forgot about how hard the first year is.  So ready or not, numero cinco is on the way, due in July! (If this were our first, second, or even third child, it probably would've warranted it's own post. But this will have to do for a baby announcement. I have a good intention of doing a post entitled, "Reflections on having our fifth child." In it I'll talk about all the bone head comments we get, juxtaposed with God's view of children and family. Something like that...

Speaking of having a baby... It's funny because tonight I was showing our kids my burn scar that's all over my right thigh. Add this to the idiot list- the comment, not the scar. The scar is already on the list... I said, "Good thing it didn't burn this area [pointing to my 'loins' -in King James speak], otherwise we wouldn't have had you kids." 

The first thing Cameron asks, "Why?"

Ava starts laughing, "You mean you could give birth to a baby with that stuff? Moms have the babies, not daddies..."

Well, it's not surprising I got myself into this unplanned sex talk. Our parenting strategy is to be as forthright as possible on this issue. So we call all the body parts what they actually are called.... "hand" "arm" "leg" "foot" "penis" (not "thingy")

I already have a whole post on the sex talk. Click here. 

Oh yeah, the answer to the first picture: the remnants of Makai's tortilla from dinner tonight. You've got to give him credit, though. The way he folds it and takes bites makes it look like a kind of tortilla snow flake. Or swiss cheese.

 When you're worn out from little kids- dinner is a big pain- the homestretch before the much anticipated bedtime. So tonight I pulled out a winner using all the leftovers I could muster to pull off chicken quesadillas. So the half eaten tortilla picture reminds me that today was another "W"- chalk it up!

Props to all you parents out there in the trenches!